Fr. Peter McVerry:

Let me take up a couple of the points made. Private landlords evicting into homelessness is a special situation. The last Government introduced legislation to prevent landlords from using the excuse that they were selling the house. They now have to produce proof that they are selling it, or that their granny is going to move in, before they can evict. However, the private rental sector needs to be re-regulated. Although I am not used to defending landlords, I do know some who have had great problems with a tenant; there might be anti-social behaviour or a tenant might not have paid the rent for 12 months. We cannot expect landlords not to evict such tenants into homelessness. There is a need for a process of re-regulation to protect landlords as well as tenants before we have a blanket ban on landlords evicting people into homelessness.

The Department of Social Protection has argued that no one has become homeless as a result of the failure to increase rent supplement. That is absolutely and totally untrue. I know that there is a scheme which operates on a case by case basis. A family can go to Threshold and apply for the supplement and they may or may not get it. Most of the families with whom we deal who are are evicted for non-payment of rent have never heard of Threshold and do not know about this system. They simply receive a notice from the landlord that the rent is going up; they have no way of paying it and end up being moved out. It is a guesstimate, but at least 2,000 families have become homeless as a result of the failure of the Department of Social Protection to increase rent allowance in the past couple of years.

I am not sure what happens in other jurisdictions when people leave prison. In England there is access to private rented accommodation. We had one lad from Ireland who was in prison in England. In November he rang me to say he was being discharged in February. They already had accommodation organised for him and were going to have two weeks' social welfare payments for him at the gate of the prison when he was leaving. They also had a place for him on a training course. If somebody is in prison for 12 months or two years, we have enough time to organise something, but in Ireland those leaving prison do not even have a medical card. This is causing huge problems. I spend most of my weekends in the prisons. It is also a guesstimate, but there are 40 to 50 people in prison who would be discharged in the morning if they had somewhere to go to. They may be eligible for bail or temporary release but are in custody because they do not have an address. They are being kept in prison at enormous expense because we have failed to provide for them.

We need to declare a national emergency. This is an emergency which requires a multi-agency response. The Minister with responsibility for housing is powerless without the co-operation of the Departments of Finance, Social Protection and Health, the local authorities, NAMA and the approved housing bodies.

Unless they all come up with a plan that they can buy into and support, the Minister's hands are tied. The only way that can happen is for the Taoiseach to declare an emergency, which he would do if there was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the morning, get all of the relevant bodies around a table and agree on a plan to which all of them must adhere. The Taoiseach would make sure that those plans were being implemented at weekly meetings.